This is a fully accessorized tribute to the talented Chris Latta, the voice of my favorite villains of the 1980’s: Starscream, Cobra Commander, and D-Compose. This combined several projects I had wanted to tackle for a while all into one custom figure. It involved everything from heavy modification/kitbashing and sculpting to detailed custom paintjobs; taking 6 months to complete. This placed first in the Botcon 2014 custom figure contest.

Masterpiece “Death Throes” Starscream

The MP Ghost Starscream was modified to correct the inequities of the MP-03 and appear closer to MP-11 by repositioning the hip mounted tail fins. It was further modified to fit inside the D-Compose pretender shell, for the tailfins to attach to D-Compose’s weapon as a type of axe, and to include a headmaster style tech spec readout in the cockpit. Dry transfer decals from Hasbro Asia were applied before a custom paint job intended to resemble a mid-death transition to Ghost Starscream. The hands and nose cone were painted blue (why Takara didn't in the first palce is a wonder), the panels were lined with a Gundam pen, and the jet engines were painted to glow. I thought the ghost paint job would tie in loosely to D-Compose’s zombie theme. Cobra symbols were added to the tailfins as a tie-in to the Cobra Commander headmaster. The small chrome pilot was also painted to resemble Cobra Commander.

Cobra Commander Headmaster

I wanted the headmaster to look more like a GI Joe figure in a flight suit with subtle cues of headmaster armor, namely the armor on the arms. The headmaster was kitbashed from Human Alliance Sergeant Chaos, Headrobots Hothead, and MP Skywarp parts. The legs were modified to be double jointed to allow for it to fold-up to head mode. The head natural fits into a recess on the back of the MP Seeker mold. The paint job is close to Cobra Commander’s blue uniform color, but in a metallic finish.

D-Compose Pretender Shell

The Inhumanoids television show and Hasbro toyline is perhaps a bit less well known today, but was a very important part of my childhood. What’s not to like about 10 story tall monsters from the center of the Earth voiced by Chris Latta? Given that the best of the G1 Decepticon Pretenders were monsters, D-Compose is in my opinion a better choice than the G1 Starscream pretender shell.
The vintage D-Compose toy was completely dismantled and rebuilt to be 2-inches taller, include room inside for an inner robot, and a removable magnetic back hatch to allow access. The improved D-compose has new hands, a pelvis and hip bones, a neck, and a scratch built alternate cartoon accurate head. MP Starscream can fit securely inside D-Compose with the wings extruding from his back just like the G1 Pretender Starscream. He was given the most detailed and disgusting paint job I could muster with lots of sores and oozing puss and blood for good measure.